


if the heart is worth the pain

by saunatonttu



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, F/M, aftermath of s5ep1, mostly kate and tony's friendship from tony's perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 16:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4485939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunatonttu/pseuds/saunatonttu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Jeanne really didn’t deserve any of that.</i>
</p><p>That thought was a persistent constant in his veins, in every heartbeat that drummed a slow rhythm inside his chest as he tried to get his mind off of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if the heart is worth the pain

_Jeanne really didn’t deserve any of that._

That thought was a persistent constant in his veins, in every heartbeat that drummed a slow rhythm inside his chest as he tried to get his mind off of her.

Go figure, he couldn’t manage that, not when the hurt ( _her_ hurt, the one he inflicted on her) was still fresh like the pickles in the fridge of her apartment.

Could pickles even be _fresh_? Weren’t they just preserved pieces of cucumber, stuck inside a jar for who knows how long? So, really, that simile about pickles made no sense; Tony bit back a laugh as he held his head between his hands, cursing himself as his teeth dug into the skin of his lips.

The early morning light that trickled into the office from several windows wasn’t comforting, but Tony hadn’t expected it to be. The darkness of night had always been the time he found himself in the warm embrace of pretense’s comfort. (Pretenses of everything being fine, even when nothing was.)

Tony sighed, rubbing at his cheeks with his palms. Exhaustion was a friend sometimes, kicking all thoughts and feelings away, but right now the heavy feeling of his eyelids and greasiness of his hair only served to make the dread heavier inside him, very much like lead.

 _She didn’t deserve any of it,_ Tony thought, and there was the familiar twist in his heart that he had been expecting because it happened whenever his thoughts wandered to her. Which happened a lot. It was harder to get his mind to wander _away_ from Jeanne, in fact.

Tony smiled. Hard enough for his cheeks to hurt, though this pain was a far cry from the pleasant tingling that skittered over his face when it was genuine and not for the irony of falling in love in a fake relationship. (That wasn’t as fake as it should have been; perhaps it had never been as fake as Jenny had intended it to be. As _he_ had intended it to be.)

The sun was rising, sending its greetings into the empty office, over Tony’s desk and his slumped person. He knew what he would find if he opened the last drawer of his desk, buried beneath the magazines he hadn’t looked at in a long time, save for superficial show whenever McGee and Ziva had their first suspicions.

It was a picture of Jeanne. Careless, really, considering how the possibility of Ziva and McGeek snooping around was higher than zero, but Tony hadn’t been able to help himself. He never had, when it came to her and everything she was: an unbelievably bright woman with matching bravery (as the scene at the hospital proved) and a sense of humor that attracted Tony like honey attracted flies.

But that picture, _that picture_ was a reminder of happier times. More complicated times, when the weight of his lies had curled hot inside his belly, in a way similar to lead weights.

Tony nearly slammed his head against his desk, fingers tight around what little hair they managed to grasp on his head. The pain tingling across his scalp was very welcomed, though the ruffled look he was sure would follow _wasn’t_.

She had loved that look in the mornings when he woke up beside her to her trailing fingers and gentle stares.

 _“You snore, Tony,”_ she had laughed the first (second, third) time he had stayed.

 _“DiNardos do not snore,”_ had been Tony’s sleepy response. He had even managed the amused smile that came easily to him after having honed it during his adolescence, following his father’s footsteps rather unwillingly.

Jeanne’s eyes had glinted under the early morning sun that trickled into the room through the curtains. Whether it was that or her ginger touch on his shoulder that made him shudder pleasantly, Tony still wasn’t sure.

 _“Maybe not all of them,”_ she had said, her warm lips brushing against his cheek, _“just you, Tony.”_

 _“You’re a real charmer, Jeanne,”_ he had laughed, the sound muffled when Jeanne kissed him.

_“You’re rubbing off on me.”_

_“Really now?”_

He could just about hear her laughter press against his ear, traveling all the way into his heart little by little.

Tony lifted his gaze, elbows back on the desk as he pulled himself up, eyes darting towards Ziva’s desk – but it wasn’t Ziva that flickered in the periphery of his mind right then.

“I always knew a woman was going to be your undoing.”

Her voice was the same as he remembered it – of course, as she was the production of his memories rather than actual senses. Tony smiled at himself, tight and sad and a little lost like he had felt when Kate had died.

When Kate had been killed.

“Kick a man while he’s down, Kate,” Tony grumbled, squinting his eyes as he observed his hallucination. He was tired, exhausted to the bone, maybe even more than a few years ago when it had been Kate that paid the heavy price. “I guess you’re having the time of your l— _after_ life.”

He could hear it, Kate’s laugh that was a little too loud when it was genuine. Tony’s smile widened, but what was there to hide from a ghost that knew you better than you knew yourself?

(It was a tough competition between Ziva and Kate: Ziva was good at reading people, came with the territory of her job, but Kate was a profiler to the bone.

 _Had been._ )

“Yeah, well, you only have yourself to blame, don’t you?” Kate was straightforward, merciless at handling his weaknesses, and Tony had the urge to faceplant his desk again. “What were you thinking, accepting an undercover job like that?”

Tony looked at her, the projection of his imagination. He was _exhausted_ if he saw Kate; it had been a long, long time since the last time.

“No Catholic school girl uniform this time,” he commented, a flippant grin on his lips. “This is all rather disappointing, Kate.”

She was leaning against her desk ( _Ziva’s_ desk, he corrected himself) in her usual proper clothes, a button-up shirt and proper pants that did nothing to show off her legs. Tony didn’t have the mind to tut at the sight, as the first memory he wandered to was the shared bath with Jeanne and the almosts.

Kate scowled at him, her snort only half as indignant as Tony had expected. ( _Your imagination is failing you, DiNozzo,_ Tony mentally cursed himself.) “Tony, be real for one moment.”

A laugh tickled at the back of his throat – a hysteric, far-from-happy laugh that had been stuck inside him ever since the whole ordeal with Jeanne had reached its climax and end.

“Be _real_ , Kate? You forget who you’re talking to.”

Tony had been at his realest, at his most vulnerable with Jeanne, and it had backfired on him like a shotgun.

Now, _that_ was a funny thought. Movie material, even. Maybe Quentin Tarantino movie, even.

The stinging in his scalp from his hands tugging at his hair was nothing compared to the ever widening canyon inside his chest.

Setting his hands down, against the hard surface of his desk and on top of the files he had been staring from three am when he had come back, Tony cast Kate a tired glance, fingers twitching over the papers.

Kate looked good, but he guessed dying young did that to a person. The last memories anyone would hold of them didn’t include the wrinkles that came with age.

Well, that wouldn’t stop him, Tony supposed.

The Catholic school uniform had been purely the creation of himself, in the end.

But not today, and certainly not any time soon.

“Tony.”

“Yes, Kate?”

Kate’s eyes were sharp, narrow as always when she blamed something on him. “You didn’t answer me – why did you take that undercover mission, and why did you continue when you knew it would not end well for neither one of you?”

“Now, _that_ is a good question, Kate!” Tony stood up, movements clumsy and harsh enough to send his spinning chair tumbling down as his hands slammed onto the desk. “A+ and a scholarship to Miss Todd for presenting us the right questions!” His voice grew louder, but there was little to worry when no one else was present.

Might look a little funny in the security tapes, though.

The ghost of Tony’s faltering imagination grimaced, hesitant at the sight of Tony’s approaching meltdown.

Tony was on a roll now, though. “Excellent question, indeed,” he muttered to himself, “I don’t know, Kate! At first the undercover missions were something that could be used to escape the team. You know, Ziva and the Geeky Pants over that desk. The one that didn’t even include you in his _book_ , Kate. Now, that is a shame—“

“Dear _god_ , Tim did _not_ write a novel about you guys.”

“Ahaha, but he _did_.”

“I can’t believe I missed that.”

“Shoulda stayed alive, Kate.”

“This isn’t about me, Tony.”

“You’re right, it isn’t.” Tony’s lips formed a thinner line as he wrung his hands together; it wasn’t something he normally did, but his normal gestures didn’t come to him right then. “It’s about why I accepted the damn mission.” Tony swallowed hard, throat constricting as the air bobbed down his windpipe, but it was too late now that he had begun to vent.

It was what Kate was there for, in the first place.

“You weren’t there when Gibbs was gone, Kate.”

“I know as much as you do, Tony.” Kate sounded gentler, more subdued, her heels clicking against the floor as she shifted her feet.

“Boss was gone, Kate,” Tony allowed himself to take a breath, “and I was the team leader with no clue how to do anything other than repeating the little things. The head slaps, the coffee, the goddamn Gibbs stare! To make things as normal as possible, to be the leader the team needed.”

“Tony, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need a hug.”

Tony took another breath, deeper and steadier. “The undercover jobs, all of them, were to fill up the moments in-between. It seemed like a good idea, at the time. Kept me away from Ziva and McGee occasionally, too, since I was off searching clues of the, well, you know, big name arms dealer. Jenny’s object of obsession. Or a person of obsession, since you’re gonna yell at me for treating people like objects again—“

“That’s just women, and that was before her,” Kate interrupted. Tony’s eyes found her face, to be greeted by her small smile. “Tell me about her.”

“Jeanne,” Tony sighed, as lovelorn as he had been with Jeanne for a while now. “You said no woman could ever tolerate my endless movie references, but she did. Does. I don’t know. She did when she thought I was Tony DiNardo.”

“How creative.”

“Wasn’t my idea.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Fine. It was. Only because I don’t feel right not being Tony.” Tony sighed at himself, rubbing at his cheeks as the weariness weighed over him heavier than before. He had been avoiding his apartment for the fear someone would ambush him on his way there, but maybe the risk was worth the price: some decent rest in his own bed.

Maybe a hundred years would do.

“Anyway, she’s… breathtaking.” That was one word for her, and Tony’s stomach flipped, a nauseating churn following the feeling. “I love her, Kate.”

“Now that’s a sentence I never thought I would hear from you, Tony.” Kate’s lips pressed together, arms crossed over her abdomen as she observed him in her usual manner even if there was nothing usual about the situation.

Tony could always count on Kate to treat him in that way. “Yeah, me neither,” Tony murmured as he turned to pick up his chair from the floor, hands fumbling with his attempts to do something that would take his mind off of what felt like heartbreak.

It wasn’t the first, but it was the biggest one.

A disaster that shouldn’t have-- 

No, he couldn’t regret Jeanne, even if he regretted the undercover part of it.

He loved her.

He _loves_ her, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it anymore. But…

“I told her,” Tony whispered. “About me. She left. I don’t know if she’s coming back, Kate.” Maybe it was karma. If Kate were alive, she would make a point to say that, rub it in his face until he would admit he kind of deserved it.

As it was, this Kate was just a figment of his imagination, a ghostly memory of what could have been.

And this Kate didn’t laugh at him.

“It’s a shock,” Kate murmured, empathizing with Jeanne as he thought she would. He couldn’t blame her; Jeanne was the innocent party involved, whereas Tony was something like a bad guy with good intentions. Or a good guy with bad intentions.

It was hard to tell, sometimes.

“I hurt her, Kate,” Tony muttered, a hand on his face, a nose stuck between his thumb and index finger. “I don’t know if it can ever be fixed.”

“There’s no fixing what’s already been done,” Kate said.

“Oh man, please don’t go all Obi-Wan on me. Or worse, Yoda. God knows what those two would say to me,” Tony groaned, and Kate sighed, her breath a harsh wheeze of pure exasperation.

It was a little like the old times, before everything had gone to hell after Tony had somewhat recuperated from the plague.

Before Kate had taken that bullet to her head.

“You should go, Kate,” he said, smiling at her as though that made any difference at all. _We both should._ “You’re missing out on all the fun parties in Heaven, y’know.”

“What makes you so sure—“

“Oh, please, like a good Catholic girl like you wouldn’t go to heaven.”

“I meant the parties.”

“Heaven without them would be boring, Kate, and I don’t wish boredom on your poor soul.”

“You’re as infuriating as always.” Kate rolled her eyes, shook her head, and Tony could almost smell the fruity fragrance Kate used to wear for work, or if she had come from Steve’s place.

“It’s part of my charm.” This time, his facial muscles didn’t ache as much as before, and the smile felt more genuine on his lips.

“You wish.” Kate’s smile was a little wider than his, just as genuine, and Tony tore his eyes away as another smile flickered in his memory, the one that had made his chest swell and put him at ease when he needed it the most.

 _I love you, Jeanne_ , he thought, with despair similar to what he had felt on the day he had first said the words to her.

When he lifted his gaze, Kate was gone as he had expected her to be. She hadn’t been there in the first place.

“Thanks,” he said regardless, the word soft against his lips and quiet to his ears.

He left not too long afterwards, steps heavy and loud in the silence of the office, with the tentative hope that when he woke up, things would be different.

But he knew better, after all the years on the job.

It wasn’t how things went; they didn’t always get better, and good things could get pulled away from you in one quick sweep.

The truth was that it hurt, and that he couldn’t really blame anyone other than himself.

Or karma.

Karma was always a good scapegoat.

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens after I rewatch the season 4. IT HURTS


End file.
